Flu Season Ends Not With a Bang however a Whimper

March 10, 2023 – The 2022-23 flu season lingered by means of the second half of January and most of February on the fringe of its outlined existence, however it now seems to be over.

For the CDC, the annual epidemic often called flu season “happens when flu exercise is greater than a CDC-defined ‘baseline’ worth.” That worth, expressed because the proportion of all outpatient visits involving influenza-like sickness to well being care suppliers within the U.S. Outpatient ILI Surveillance Community, is at the moment 2.5%.

Over the past 6 weeks, the nationwide determine has been between 2.6% (Feb. 19-25), and a pair of.7% (Jan. 15-21). In different phrases, it has lingered like no flu season has lingered before, at the least not for the reason that CDC started setting a nationwide baseline in 2007-08.

However for the week of Feb. 26 to March 4, outpatient flu-like sickness visits represented simply 2.4% of all visits, the CDC’s Influenza Division reported, dropping underneath the baseline for the primary time for the reason that first week of October 2022.

Again then, the early begin to the flu season raised concern a few “tripledemic” involving respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and COVID-19. However by the point the flu season peaked, RSV activity had already began declining and the anticipated COVID surge by no means occurred, CDC information exhibits.

Because the begin of the 2022-23 season, the US has had at the least 26 million flu sicknesses, 290,000 hospitalizations, and 18,000 deaths, 125 of which have been baby deaths, the CDC estimates.